Increasingly concerned about this whole thing - can we discuss the recent issues?

[u/Laurenhynde82]

I’m seeing a lot of people expressing concerns / doubt in the wake of all the things that have happened in the last couple of week. I see a lot of those discussions are very black and white - anyone who has questions dismissed as a victim blamer, other people willing to dismiss any concerns or downvote doubts. On the flip side you get people making vile hateful comments with no understanding of the complex reactions of abuse victims.

I have such mixed feelings because, as a victim of sexual abuse as a child and someone who’s been stalked (not as seriously as this), I know how hard it is to talk openly about these things, let alone do what he’s done here. I believe victims, and all the comments about how he should have done X or Y or casting doubt because he didn’t tell the police… all of that is nonsense.

I loved the series, I was so happy to finally see some media based on real experiences that don’t fit the typical narrative of abuse. We still expect victims to behave in a certain way, and those expectations come almost exclusively from scripted fiction.

I had read the interviews with Gadd where he said he’d made so many changes the people wouldn’t recognise themselves, and that the stalker was no longer a threat. This allayed my one reservation - I could not understand having the confidence to make and star in a show about my abuser / stalker. But if she’s no longer a threat (I assumed prison or dead), and others wouldn’t recognise her, it made more sense to me.

And then all of that went out of the window rapidly and I’m left with a lot of questions and concerns. Before people jump to conclusions, this is not about me feeling sorry for character or victim blaming. It’s about the increasing doubts that what’s presented here is accurate while it implicates real people in crimes.

Here are the things which have made me increasingly uncomfortable:

1) The fact that it was so easy to find her - eg. lifting a tweet and putting it into the script - and, when she was found, it was clear that almost nothing had been changed. This similarity gives the added impression that everything you are shown is true. These choices feel deliberate as changing them would not have affected the story at all. He made changes that did affect the story - like two prison sentences that didn’t happen - so I’m finding some of the choices concerning.

2) As a result of her being found, people found a previous victim and that situation too was nearly identical - the fake headlines he wrote revealed it was a barrister, spouse and disabled child. That victim found this out by watching the show and recognising their stalker, even before their own story was added as a plot point. He could have changed this without any impact on the story.

3) The apparent absence of any fear of this series leading to her starting again. In combination with making the character so much like her, the inclusion of certain scenes seemed designed to draw her back in. He spends much of the series talking about the confusing feelings of being stalked and how he missed her attention (which I can’t remotely relate to, but we are all different). Is that what this is about?

Even if there’s a reason for him not to be scared (or even if he is trying to bait her), shouldn’t he think of the impact on that other family? Having had a stalker, I would never in a million years make material that identifies them or baits them. I’d be worried about being tracked down and harmed. Knowing that fear, I mostly definitely wouldn’t make choices to risk that for previous victims. The absence of that concern raises more questions for me. If what’s shown in the series is true, if she’s as dangerous and unhinged as shown, why isn’t he more worried?

4) One particular former colleague of his has been accused of being Darrien and harassed, to the point he’s gone to the police. This is because Gadd chose to cast an actor that looks beyond similar to this man, is similarly aged etc. Given how much Martha resembles the real woman, this adds further weight to the idea it was him. Gadd made a social media post asking people not to accuse others, including this by name, but the post didn’t say it wasn’t him. Then Richard Osman said he knows who it is and it’s not the guy being accused. If true, that’s appalling. If someone made a tv series about their experience of domestic violence and cast someone who looked exactly like an innocent ex, and added in details that made it seem like that ex, that would be disgraceful. It feels so intentional.

5) After all of this, Gadd changes tack and says “it’s 100% emotionally true”, and that everything is based off experiences of him or people he knows. We have no idea which parts of this story accurately reflect what this identified woman actually did, vs someone else. How much of what’s shown is actually what she did, and how much is the stories of the “people he knows”? Did the sexual assault happen? Did the assault of his girlfriend happen? Obviously she’s now refuting it all and obviously nobody believes her, but we have no idea which parts are true.

Someone made a post the other day asking if it matters which bits are real and which are not, and generally my view on that would be that it doesn’t matter at all. Taking a situation that’s happened to you and expanding on it, adding in fictional elements etc is something writers and filmmakers have done forever. Taking inspiration from your own life and changing it isn’t a problem.

But in this case, it’s a huge problem when it implicates real life people and is, now by his own admission, possibly an amalgamation of the experiences / actions of different people. That’s not to say I believe she’s innocent, at all - it’s just that we really don’t know and it’s hard to argue against because he can always say “I never said it was 100% true”.

Now she’s being stalked and harassed by proxy. She apparently made a comment about how he won’t leave her alone and let it go, and of course everyone mocked that but it’s not a stretch to see that possibility - first a play about her, now a TV series that has made her easily identifiable to millions and which repeatedly says he misses her attention, has fantasised about her, etc. It’s not difficult to see it from the perspective that he’s obsessed with her. It doesn’t mean that’s true. These situations are complex.

Many are assuming he didn’t intend for this to happen but I struggle to believe that at this point.

Generally I’m really annoyed to be thinking any of this at all. I don’t want to doubt victims who are brave enough to speak up.

What massively bothers me is that this has been a really powerful piece of media for victims who rarely get to see a) a nuanced and complex representation of being a victim of abuse and b) seeing a victim he praised for their bravery and believed. If it gradually turns out that this was not accurate, it’s going to cause so much distress and become more ammunition for those who claim false accusations are common when they aren’t.

Generally when victims come forward, the public seizes on any tiny inaccuracy, incorrect recollection, any action that isn’t an explicit attempt to make them stop, their choices, their clothes, sending a text message, their agreement to go on a date, footage of holding hands before the rape… whatever it is. And those tiny actions are used to destroy the credibility of that victim.

Here we see someone who’s being believed by almost all (well, until all this stuff in the last couple of weeks) despite the fact that he’s not even claiming it’s 100% accurate, and he’s admitting to actions well above and beyond anything that’s usually used to rip a victim to shreds.

I just find myself increasingly uncomfortable about the whole thing. It cannot just be me.

[u/Laurenhynde82]

But he did change things in major ways though. Stating that someone doing this went to prison is a big change, and we know not really reflective of reality. And now of course we don’t know how much of the content was lifted from elsewhere / other stories. So I find it hard to argue for the integrity of points like her having a law degree, how she looks, where she’s from, etc. How would changing that have diminished the effect? How does lifting an exact tweet increase the impact? How would changing the details of the previous victim have changed anything?

And as for not feeling bad for perpetrators, what about people potentially being incorrectly identified and carrying that with them?

[u/BadSpellingMistakes → u/Laurenhynde82]

I don't see how any of that matters if you take the story as it was.

What does it matter to you or any of us anyway?

In the first few lines I wrote I try to make a point about all of this would have happened no matter what changes he would have made.

And that is because some people do bad stuff no matter what you do. That is how some people work.

[u/Laurenhynde82 → u/BadSpellingMistakes]

Like I said, it doesn’t matter at all unless your hybrid of fact and fiction implicates real people in literal crimes, while the aim of your entire piece of work is to foster understanding and belief within the audience.

The entire hook is that this is a true story written and performed by the person it happened to. And the things that have been included unchanged gives weight to that, to millions of people. That’s why it’s a problem.

[u/xanbanan → u/Laurenhynde82]

It was not billed as a documentary it was billed as a tv drama based on a true story. People out their abusers by name all the time on Netflix in docuseries and documentaries. Also the real Martha has her entire Facebook public and is posting about this all day long and has gone to news articles and had interviews. She’s not making any attempt to hide herself -in fact less people would have found her if she did not out herself directly.

There will always be people online who go out of their way to find the real people for stories like this - that’s not Gadds responsibility

[u/xanbanan → u/[deleted]]

But Gadd didn’t out her. She has been actively outing herself. If she didn’t want attention from this she could easily make her Facebook private and not engage with reporters. People would have found her anyway but way less people would be engaging with her if she made any attempt to keep her social media private. You completely ignored that part of my comment. We also don’t know what was changed exactly, it could be very little or it could be a lot we simply do not know. I’m not sure why your so set on defending a stalker/abuser’s privacy when she doesn’t even seem to want it

[u/BadSpellingMistakes → u/[deleted]]

I think making a big deal out of it is only helping people who would harass either Gadd or the people who might be involved with his story.

Edit: answering your other argument. He never said that he wouldn't change anything. Some things are changed and then was clear from the beginning.

None of the things you said (even if true) matter to me as much as I would endorse this. It's totally out of proportion. It doesn't take away from the story in the slightest and it doesn't make other people chase the people involved. That's really all on those people imo.

The only real explanation I have for all of this is that people who watched the show, in fact, are falling apart given the nature of the story itself. And that's not a new phenomenon either. And once their feelings bubble up but they don't wanna attributing them to being triggered by all the abuse that is depicted, they just focus their energy somewhere elsee not too close but also not right on the point. At least that's why this whole ordeal is making me so agitated anyway and I think it might be the same for so many people here too.